September 20, 2010

Real estate agents famously keep track of test scores in school districts, although it's not clear which is the leading and which the lagging indicator: public school test scores or home prices. It would seem like a consulting firm might profit by creating a statistical model alerting them to arbitrage opportunities where public school test scores and home prices have gotten out of whack.

50 comments:

Wouldn't the most simple and effective method be to look at demographic trends of an area from US Census data? With only that, it's not hard to tell where things like white flight or declining schools will happen next.

I swear to God, some of your readers are right. You could be making a lot of money selling your observations to various investment entities who are basing their activities on how people actually behave rather than tell pollsters they behave.

Come on, Steve, this is pretty much common sense. Keep the home values up, it keeps the riffraff out. Home values fall, or too many apartments built up, and the wrongs sorts get in. I have seen this cycle of destruction wiping out my city.

The only thing that arrests the process a bit is being outside of the public transportation zone.

There's probably a good number of places where test scores lag home values, mostly in gentrifying neighborhoods. SWPLs move in to "vibrant neighborhoods", pushing up housing prices, but when it's time for Aiden to go to kindergarden, it's also time to move to the suburbs (unless private school is in the budget).

I have lived in a number of places in the USA and have to say that I don't think that the relevant consideration is the MEAN or MEDIAN test scores of a school district. Rather the relevant thing is the left tail of the distribution.

Let's ignore race for a minute by discussing a nearly all white state like Maine or Vermont.

Assume that you have three types of whites, low IQ whites, average IQ whites and high IQ whites.

A school district with one third, one third, one third will have the same average IQ as a school district that consists 100% of the average IQ whites.

But the school with average IQ whites will have real estate that sells at a real premium.

The main priority of home buyers is keeping their children away from other children with a below average IQ. Yes it is nice to get the kids in with high IQ kids, but that is clearly a secondary consideration.

As Chris Rock said, your main job as a father is to keep your daughter off the pole. If you are white, no matter what the IQ of your daughter is, if she is going to high school that contains low IQ girls your daughter is much more likely to wind up on the pole.

As for your sons, they can certainly get in to trouble no matter who their friends are, but they are likely to get in to much more trouble with low IQ friends than with high IQ friends.

Steve, to put this in Los Angeles terms, low IQ whites are the ones that live in Sunland. The low IQ white teenagers in Sunland are frequently doing meth, riding their motorcycles without a helmet, driving drunk and doing all sorts of stuff that can get your son killed if he hangs around with them.

In los Angeles the high IQ whites are living in a place like San Marino.

Let's say that the average IQ whites in the Los Angles region live in Valencia.

Ask any parent, if they had a choice of 100% Valencia kids, or 33% Sunland kids, 33% Valencia kids, 33% San Marino kids, they would choose to have their kids go to school with 100% kids from Valencia.

The downside of having your kids exposed to the low IQ whites is much bigger than the upside to having them exposed to high IQ whites.

Again, I write this from a white centered perspective, and a Los Angeles centered perspective (in order to name neighborhoods that you Steve really know well) but you could make the same comparison between school districts in other cities.

Neighborhoods are either getting better or worse. The only inbetween are neighborhoods where there is very little turnover (read white and old) and so it is in temporary stasis. I am so glad I bought the worst house in a great neighborhood.

It would seem like a consulting firm might profit by creating a statistical model alerting them to arbitrage opportunities where public school test scores and home prices have gotten out of whack.

And it seems like if you could keep your dadgum mouth shut for half a minute, and capitalize on these ideas yourself [rather than giving them away for free], then you'd be a Soros or a Brin or a Zuckerberg.

After visiting Hong Kong I had an idea for capitalizing on HBD knowledge to make a real killing

As you know, the high rise public housing in cities like Newark is occupied by NAMs. These high rise buildings seem to have a great deal of crime taking place within them. The city fathers decide to empty out the buildings by giving the residents section 8 vouchers.

Today most of the buildings thus emptied out sti empty for years or are knocked down.

It seems to me that a real estate person can buy them for very little money a then fill them up with recent Chinese immigrants. Chinese immigrants are known for not causing crime, so you could hve the buildings be crime free. Since the buildings resemble the housing that is common in Hong Kong I can't imagine any Chinese immigrants would avoid living in them.

There is a real arbitrage here. The common meme is that living in high rise buildings causes crime when really the buildings are fine and you can adaptively re use them for another group paying market rate rents

Or you could move to an area of town where the jungle is at least 2 miles away and send your kids to public magnet or public prep schools just so you could save some money. IN retrospect I would have moved to the suburbs as contacts and friends are the most important aspects of success. There are many people who espouse equality drival but you should find out where they move once the little baby is old enough to attend school.

In Maryland, realtors can't talk about crime or schools, but they can tell you where to look for information. And at least in montgomery county, schools' racial breakdown, free lunch percentage (a poverty measure), and test scores are all available online. I'm not sure where to get racial data on a neighborhood online, though it must be out there somewhere. The standard way to see it is to park on the street a few minutes before school gets out and keep a count.

People in the US buy and sell houses as if they were all regular readers and commentators on this blog. They twist their words into pretzels to justify doing what they know in their gut is prudent with respect to where they should live. Good neighborhoods...good schools...all are basically just code words. If you want to make money off diversity arbitrage, you've got to get a political angle, because only heavily politically influenced people who are spending other people's money will act like naive imbeciles with respect to diversity.

However, every state's education department has comparative data available. Some are more useful than others (CSVs vs PDFs), but all of them have it. For maps of the area covered by a school, see the relevant school district's web site (Google is your friend).

Also, you can find the state and district profiles for demographics, school sizes, and other info at nces.ed.gov. For example, go there and go to Data Tools-->State/District Profiles

And, for a few states, the wonderful www.schoolperformancemaps.com has color-coded every school on top of a Google map.

"f you want to make money off diversity arbitrage, you've got to get a political angle, because only heavily politically influenced people who are spending other people's money will act like naive imbeciles with respect to diversity."

That's largely true. Real estate prices are driven by people talking to people and by driving around and looking. There was a Harrison Ford movie in which he was an LAPD officer on the verge of getting his pension who had gotten his realtor license -- who knows more about real estate trends in an area than a cop who drives around the area all day eyeballing people?

Still, there is so much data available today that somebody might want to do a Ph.D. dissertation on modeling the interactions between home prices and test scores that, if you found something, could be turned into a business.

Any school with lots of Asians is gonna have them test scores. However, since Asians cook delicious but smelly food, home prices could go down cuz if you put all them Asians cookin that kung pao all in one big old building then it get smelly fast. And Asians, specially Chinese and Vietnamese, they ain't known for keepin things too tidy, if you know what I mean. You eva been to an Asian grocery store? I mean, outside of ranch 99 and H mart, most of them be smellin like dog dodo. if they ain't be eatin the dog, ya dig?

But when them non-ghetto azns who good with the computerz and shiz go a livin in places then home prices gotta fly YO! I mean cupertino? Damn, boys gotta be droppin 1 milz for a small little cottage barely the size of them ancestors houses in the motherland! A bit better now, but ya know?

I am left dumb-founded and absolutely shocked and appalled at some of the comments made. What racist nonsense you spout! Don't you realize that you can't build models that are based on race? There are more variations within a race than between!

Steve Sailer said...Still, there is so much data available today that somebody might want to do a Ph.D. dissertation on modeling the interactions between home prices and test scores that, if you found something, could be turned into a business.

That sounds like a recipe for disaster. My guess is you're going to do such a PhD at the sociology dept. Who's gonna grade such a non-PC paper?

"As Chris Rock said, your main job as a father is to keep your daughter off the pole. If you are white, no matter what the IQ of your daughter is, if she is going to high school that contains low IQ girls your daughter is much more likely to wind up on the pole."

- There is some truth to this as some of the girls are lower IQ single mom girls who are trying to make ends meet. But more often, its girls who are working their way through college who are the ones on the pole.

"its girls who are working their way through college who are the ones on the pole."

There are some - but even if she's not screwed up before she starts dancing, the environment of the place, the easy money, and reality of selling her sexuality will permanently screw her up. Daddies, don't let your babies grow up to be strippers...

"I am left dumb-founded and absolutely shocked and appalled at some of the comments made. What racist nonsense you spout! Don't you realize that you can't build models that are based on race? There are more variations within a race than between!"

Haha. Nice attempt at pretending to be a clueless liberal, but I'll play along.

You're spouting the "there is no such thing as race" meme. Well, if true, what do you have to worry about?

how do we explain to black folks that our justice system treats all of us equally ?"

Snort. We know damned well blacks already get more breaks than they deserve, at the expense of whites. Of course we aren't all treated equally - and blacks if they knew what was good for them would not be asking for true equality.

As for cocaine, it was black leaders who asked for harsher sentences for crack. Now that results in more blacks going to jail for crack than whites going to jail for regular cocaine, suddenly blacks forget all that and shout "racism". Tough. Think about what you're asking for next time.

But more often, its girls who are working their way through college who are the ones on the pole.

I hear this a lot. I tend to think it comes more from Sailer's Law of Male Screenwriting (hooker w/ the heart of gold, disease-free and socking away money until she lands the millionaire). At best, it's a for-profit night college that teaches them nothing and they stay in the sex industry paying off (or not paying off) student loan debt. Maybe they become cocktail waitresses if they don't become drug-addicted in the meantime. I'd bet the majority stay as career sex-industry workers.

Steve - ten years ago in Atlanta, the realtors' sites would show percentages of EASL students in school districts. I don't know if they still do.

The internet and the Christian homeschooling movement have caused the free market cup of truly excellent teaching material to runneth over. Even an education novice can put together a curriculum superior to anything a public or private school could gin up. Move to a safe low tax White community in some Rocky Mountain or Plain State where mom can stay home and teach while dad works, and get the most for your housing dollar and the best education outcome for your kids.

We are having a debate on this blog that can not take place any where else. The mainstream media won't admit that Northeast Asian genes give the average Northeast Asian in the USA a higher IQ than the average white.

I am white and I own a business. I hire whichever workers I can get who have highest possible IQ along with reliability and self discipline. This of course means that in the interest of serving my clients and building the success of my business that on the margin i will hire an American citizen of Northeast Asian ancestry instead of an American citizen of white European ancestry.

Simple as that. Half the people on this blog like the fact that America has plenty of super high IQ Northeast Asians earning high incomes and paying high taxes. Citizens of Northeast Asian ancestry generally stay out of jail more than white citizens and also pay more in taxes than the average white citizen.

So half the people on this blog are ok stepping back and letting employers like me choose to hire citizens of Northeast Asian ancestry.

Other people here feel that since the USA was founded by whites that the good high paying jobs should almost all be allocated to WHITE citizens instead of to citizens of Northeast Asian ancestry.

In general, white business owners like me want to have the freedom to hire whatever color citizen we think will be best for the business.

In general, unemployed and underemployed whites want business owners to show preference to white citizens when it comes to hiring.

There is nothing wrong with the view I have, nothing wrong with the view of the unemployed and underemployed whites.

Now, when an unemployed or underemployed white sees the national merit scholar data, it is demoralizing since this data certainly supports the idea that in a pure meritocracy plenty of whites will be unemployed while plenty of Northeast Asians will be employed in high paying jobs.

Plenty of good people on this blog want to live in a society where whites have all the good high paying jobs. I think that the national merit data shows that society can ONLY exist in a place in which Northeast Asians do not live. Yes, in Idaho you can have a very strict meritocracy and have whites in all the best jobs. So in Idaho there can be a coalition between meritocrats and white survivalists.

But in Palo Alto, any distribution of jobs on the basis of merit will leave plenty of whites at the bottom of the food chain looking up at Northeast Asians who are superior to them in the pecking order.

Our society is separating rapidly - the gaps between the winners and losers are getting wider and wider. In general, whites who see themselves as the winners of the competition are not afraid of having their kids compete. Whites who see themselves as winners are ok sending their kids to schools that have a substantial number of asians.

Whites that see themselves as losers in the competition don't want their kids going to school with Asians.

I am left dumb-founded and absolutely shocked and appalled at some of the comments made. What racist nonsense you spout! Don't you realize that you can't build models that are based on race? There are more variations within a race than between!

I am left dumbfounded and absolutely shocked and appalled at some of the comments made. What breedist nonsense you spout! Don't you realize that you can't build models that are based on dog breeds? There are more variations within a dog breed than between dog breeds. This is why Afghan hounds are just as smart as border coll...

Don't you realize that you can't build models that are based on race? There are more variations within a race than between!

What on earth does this even mean ? And if true, why would it even matter ?

Firstly the sentence implicitly acknowledges race exists; then states there are greater differences in a group of Fijians than between Fijians and Pygmies. Which is not how it looks.

Yet even if there were more genetic variation between individual Pine trees than betwixt Pine and Acacia, most of us would know instinctively which was a stand of Pine or a group of Acacia, and wouldn't be persuaded they were essentially the same because they are just wood.

High test scores and home prices are not necessarily correlated. My Texas suburb, once the hottest place to be, has been overrun by NAMs fleeing the earlier "hottest" hot spots after most of the whites left. Every valedictorian, salutatorian, and National Merit Scholar is Indian, Pakistani, or Chinese (there is a small but increasing minority of Jews as well) and every new home buyer is a nonwhite. Our much trumpeted "excellent school district" is not so excellent for whites (my own kids went the private school route). Is there a formula, I wonder, to calculate how long each northward suburban destination will remain as built by whites until the wave of NAMS again follows and destroys it?

The main priority of home buyers is keeping their children away from other children with a below average IQ. Yes it is nice to get the kids in with high IQ kids, but that is clearly a secondary consideration.

As a parent I'm not so sure this is always true. It depends on the character of the low IQ kids: do they simply live their own lives or do they disrupt and terrorize everyone around them?

In a more homogeneous midsized Midwest city with more decently behaved kids of all IQ levels, parents of smart kids would rather have a 1/3 high-IQ smart fraction.

In a diverse large coastal city with poorly behaved kids, parents of smart kids would rather have the 100% mediocre IQ student body.

If you have a strong positive ethnic identity (NE Asian, SE Asian Indian, Jewish) to withstand our contemporary corrosive American culture, kids probably still benefit more from the high-IQ smart fraction than the uniform mediocrity.

"I am left dumb-founded and absolutely shocked and appalled at some of the comments made. What racist nonsense you spout! Don't you realize that you can't build models that are based on race? There are more variations within a race than between"

THANK YOU

The reason "bad" schools and neighborhoods are bad is because whites, with their wealth and resources move once too many blacks and browns move in. A community cannot function if the new arrivals feel unwanted and all the privileged ones move away because they are too scared to do what is right.

Let's just dispense with side issues and get straight to the real deal. Where are the blacks and browns now, and where are they going? We need an interactive grid map to show their movements and forecast future trends so we know how to stay a couple steps ahead, at least, rather than the usual one step, or, catastrophically, one step behind. Why complicate something that's actually quite simple at it's core? Inside information on the next locations for section eight would also be invaluable in decision making, at least for those who can afford to have options. No point in being coy about all this, to thine own self be true. Get while the getting is still possible.

I am left dumb-founded and absolutely shocked and appalled at some of the comments made. What racist nonsense you spout! Don't you realize that you can't build models that are based on race? There are more variations within a race than between

Reading isteve and other sites one forgets there are still people out there in the wider world who believe this nonsense. Always a shock to actually see it right here at isteve. How did they get through the flyscreen?

Anon business-owner sez:In general, white business owners like me want to have the freedom to hire whatever color citizen we think will be best for the business.

THis argument was always used by the white business community in SOuth Africa during Apartheid. Businessmen then were pro-black-government hoping to cash in on an end to the sanctions and foreign investments. Lower wages was probably also a factor, but never mentioned in public. One of the main reasons why the ANC got into power was the lobby of the business-community.

Nowadays the black government is ruining small businesses and corporations with their Affirmative Action quotas. 80% of the workforce has to be black, regardless of skill level or qualification. You can imagine what this does to the productivity of formerly white high-tech companies. The stories about the gross incompetence and sense of entitlement of these black replacements are legion. With the result that many of these businessmen have now emigrated. And many whites have lost their jobs.

Funny how businessmen always have these altruistic sounding arguments, yet in practice we get the worst results stuffed down our throats. In principle I don't listen to what businessmen want. And government should in principle ignore the wishes of the business-community. Coz everything they want is selfish and predicated on money alone. But a country is there for its citizens and not for the business-community and its pecuniary interests.

THis argument was always used by the white business community in SOuth Africa during Apartheid. Businessmen then were pro-black-government hoping to cash in on an end to the sanctions and foreign investments. Lower wages was probably also a factor, but never mentioned in public. One of the main reasons why the ANC got into power was the lobby of the business-community.

Well, I think that would be a much better historical analogy if e.g. Silicon Valley had the same resulting racial problems as South Africa, and seemed likely to be heading toward the same dismal fate.

Ruling Class Elitist:We are having a debate on this blog that can not take place any where else. The mainstream media won't admit that Northeast Asian genes give the average Northeast Asian in the USA a higher IQ than the average white.

I am white and I own a business. I hire whichever workers I can get who have highest possible IQ along with reliability and self discipline...

In general, unemployed and underemployed whites want business owners to show preference to white citizens when it comes to hiring.

There is nothing wrong with the view I have, nothing wrong with the view of the unemployed and underemployed whites...

[ETC ETC ETC]

There is a certain myopia in your comments, which, if the software allowed for it, I'd try to tease out of you in the socratic fashion.

But, since the software doesn't allow for it, I'll just toss out a rhetorical question: Why are you, Mr. Bidness Owner, so dadgum determined to turn your fellow citizens [be they Asian or White] into your own personal wage slaves?

Why do you not once [in your lengthy comments] consider the possibility that maybe - just maybe! - your fellow citizens might engage with you as your peers - your equals - being owners of their own businesses?

Ownership for me, wage slavery for thee?

That's a pretty good recipe for setting back our civilization by a millenium or more.

>how do we explain to black folks that our justice system treats all of us equally ?<

Well, it shouldn't. Government is organized for a purpose: to keep on top the people who make money and have something on the ball and keep the disruptive element down. Paris is a silly f-up, but she comes from the right element in society, the monied element that supports civilization and the existence of an effective government in the first place; so she gets lenient treatment. Hey, society isn't an abstraction, or a suicide pact. It's groups of families trying to make the center hold without throwing themselves or their progeny (no matter how prodigal) to the wolves. There is no such thing as disinterested government; it's who-whom by nature.

Should a frail 90-year-old with no criminal record have his door kicked down by cops and be dragged off to jail at gunpoint at 4 in the morning for having a stash of pot to ease his chemo pain? After all, the god of "equal treatment" says he should be treated this way, since the scum dealer in the trailer park, who has a violent criminal record as long as my leg, is so treated. No one sane (i.e., no one who isn't an ideologue) would say these two individuals should be "treated equally." They aren't equal.

In other news, it is very possible that sharp real estate agents are already doing the very thing Steve suggests. Please, agents write in and tell some true stories if you have them! You can be anonymous.

In most US jurisdictions, nobody -- black or white -- will serve jail time for simple cocaine possession.

Any black person who served time for simple cocaine possession is lying to you. Most likely what happened is that he was caught with a large amount of cocaine and the charges were plea-bargained down.

Just ask any prosecutor. Actually, check out the "guywhite" blog. He is a former prosecutor who writes about racial issues. Whites are actually punished more severely for crime than blacks because there is less crime in white areas and therefore more resources to prosecute criminals.

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